


Little He Knows, Little He Sees

by DelilahBlueEyes



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, Crossover, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-24
Updated: 2014-08-24
Packaged: 2018-02-14 11:02:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2189241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DelilahBlueEyes/pseuds/DelilahBlueEyes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rumbelle Les Mis AU. Character death. Not happy. Debated deleting and still may. I dunno yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little He Knows, Little He Sees

Had she not been watching him so carefully (tracing the shape of his jaw with her eyes under his morning stubble) Isabelle would not have seen the way Anthony suddenly tensed. Every muscle drew taut under his clothing and his face took on the look of a hunting dog on the scent of a juicy rabbit. She reached out a hand to rest against his shoulder, opened her mouth to ask if he was well when he took a step away from her as if pulled by a strong rope about his waist. Brow furrowed, Isabelle glanced down the busy street, stuffed with bustling dandys and waifish poor dressed in rags until she spotted what caught his attention. Spotted her. A woman so elegant and beautiful that she fair put the sun shining above to shame. A cloud of black hair that drifted over her shoulders, dark lashed brown eyes that took in the surrounding rabble cooly. A waist near tiny enough for Isabelle to fit her hands around, certainly Anthony could. Anthony took another mechanical step away from Isabelle, staring until the woman disappeared around the corner then turned back to her with fevered eyes.

 

“Isabelle, can you find that woman for me?” He asked hoarsely, tongue flicking out to wet his lips. She couldn’t help but watch the action with her heart in her throat.

“Dunno, sir. Not sure I got such a good look at her as you did,” she teased, forcing the painful lump in her throat down. The woman was beautiful. Of course he would want her. Of course. “Mayhap she’ll stroll back by this way and you’ll get to chase her yourself. It’s very romantic, you know, running after a woman like—“

“Isabelle, please. I must find her. Please will you find where she lives? I must know!”

And there she could not deny him, for what Anthony needed so did she. Isabelle looked into his earth brown eyes and forced a smile onto lips that were nearly numb with the pain of this task.

“Course, monsieur. Me an’ my books, we’ll find her for ya. No, I don’t want your money, sir.”

He thanked her distractedly and limped away, leaning on his sturdy wooden walking stick that she wished then to be. Perhaps if she locating the siren noblewoman quickly he’d wrap her up in those long arms of his, just for a moment or two, just long enough for her to shut her eyes and breathe deep and remember the smell of him for the years she faced ahead. It would be a long and lonely life when he found his beautiful stranger and left her bereft of even the sharp words and quick temper he occasionally displayed. Cologne and mint and woodsmoke. He smelled of the home Isabelle had never had. If she cried as she watched him walk away, she didn’t know it. There were plenty of folk as would know the lovely woman, she knew. She should be on her way to someone now but as his unsteady gait takes him further and further from him she can only stand in the ankle-deep mud and watch him go.

. 

.

.

Isabelle should have left, she knew, after she brought him to his long awaited meeting. She could only bring herself to lean in the shadows around the corner of a house, head tilted back to feel the cooling rain on her face. She wasn’t sure how long she waited there before the ominous creak and clang of the great iron gate before the estate opened up and she peered around the brick and mortar of the house to see Anthony limping toward her. She tried to suppress the smile that spread across her face, trying to be disgusted with her eager behavior. Just before he reached the mouth of her alleyway he paused and drew out a startlingly white linen square, raising it to—there was blood on his neck! She gasped before she could stop herself, the small sound almost lost to the rain on the cobblestones but he heard it and his eyes found her in the inky darkness.

“Isabelle!” He cried, trying to cover up the mark on his neck before she could see it. He did not succeed. Just before the handkerchief hid it from her vision, Isabelle’s eyes made out the perfect outline of a pair of puckered lips, printed in the most shockingly vivid shade of red she’d ever seen. “You didn’t have to wait for me out here. You’re soaked to the skin, Is.”

Her heart clenched painfully in her chest, feeling like it dropped a hundred feet before soaring up into the clouds. He’d never called her that before. She never wanted him to call her anything else. “I- I just wanted to make sure…. I just thought…”

She had no excuse, really for lurking outside the house of the woman he’d surely proposed to. He had enough money. He was more well off than he’d like anyone to know, Anthony was. The buttons on his coat were too shiny by half to belong to a poor man, real brass and silver all over his clothes gave him away as an imposter among her peers.

“I, ah, I got what I needed, Is. Thank you again for finding her out for me. I admit I’m rather hopeless at navigating these streets.” He rubbed furiously at the lipstick, smearing it beyond recognition and folding the stained cloth away in an inside pocket.

“’Course you are, country boy like you. It takes a normal man six months to get used to this twisty place. I think it’ll take you perhaps six or so extra, dunce that you are.” The words were harsh, but she did her best to cover them in her usual light tone. When he smiled she wanted to hit him and smile with him and scream at him.

“Well, I’m especially glad I had you to help me, then. Thank you, Isabelle.” He reached for his wallet again and she raised her hands in a sharp gesture, aching to ask him to call her Is again.

“I don’t want your money, sir. There is more to life than money, Anthony.” She meant to bark at him, to shout the words in his face and walk away and feel no worse for it. But of course the words were wrapped in a whisper, carrying every thing she wanted him to see and feel from her. She felt as though she were laid bare before him, naked as she could be to make him listen to her. He shut his ears and eyes and refused.

“Well, best you get warmed up before you catch cold. Shall we go back to the inn?”

“Do you know the way?”

“Well, yes, I suppose but I—“

“Then go yourself. I have business to see to. You know, books to read, people to swindle, men to flirt with.”

She waited for him to ask her to come with him. It wasn’t safe for a lady out and about at night. He wouldn’t mind the company. She was sure to freeze herself if she didn’t go home soon. Anything.

“Oh, a-alright. I’ll… see you tomorrow, then?”

Coward. Bastard.

“Yes, I’m sure you will, sir. Have a nice night.”

Gods, she loved him.

 

“Is?”

“Anthony.”

“My god, what are you doing here? You should not be here!”

“I had a message to deliver to you, a letter your lady gave to me. I… I kept it from you, Anthony. I’m sorry.” Her fingers began to peel back the rain slicked front of her borrowed tweed suit jacket but were stopped by his own.

“I don’t care about that, you foolish woman! Whatever she had to say, it can wait. How long have you been here? Didn’t you hear the gunfire?” He pulled her into a sitting position by her arms, his hold tightening when her head lolled back to nod against her back. “Isabelle, are you—Isabelle, you’re bleeding!”

Of course she was, she’d been shot. Of course he hadn’t seen, hadn’t heard. She’d been shot and fallen hard on the shards of what had been a writing desk, sacrificed to the maw of the barricade. It had hurt terribly at first. Now she only felt warm and content. Now he was here.

“Is- oh, god, Is, you can’t die. Come on, now. Please. You’re going to be fine! It’s just a bit of- gods, Is, say something.”

She tried to obey but her mouth wouldn’t cooperate. Through the pleasant haze in her mind she felt his arms close about her and turned her face into collar, breathing in that smell coming from him, from all around her. She tried again to pull the little envelope from her pocket, finding her fingers too leaden and fumbling to manage it.

“Anthony, your letter. I can’t reach it. You… You need your letter.”

“You are still the most damnably stubborn woman I’ve ever seen, even on your deathbed.” He made a small, hoarse sound that may have been a laugh. It turned quickly into a cry of alarm when he pulled tweed away from her torso, finding it already sticking to the large red stain spreading across her chest. He took the envelope from her pocket and waved it exaggeratedly before her eyes with a strained smile. The smile and envelope disappeared when a wracking cough shook her frame.

“Is! Does it hurt terribly, darling?” He pulled her closer, nearly crushed her against his chest but she wouldn’t have minded for the world. He was holding her. He’d called her darling.

“It doesn’t hurt at all now you’re here. Nothing can hurt me when you’re here, least of all a bit of rain.” Isabelle felt her head slip back into the crook of his elbow, the rain tickling her face as it slipped down her cheeks. It felt nice. Her vision blurred with the raindrops falling in them so she shut them.

“Hang on, Is, please. You can’t- I don’t think I can lose you, love. Just- just stay awake, damn it!”

“’m so tired, Anthony. I think I need to sleep.” He began to cry, loud, heaving, broken sobs that shook jostled her away from sleep. She wanted to touch his face; wanted to tell him not to cry, it would be alright but her arm simply wouldn’t budge. Above her he continued to cry and she thought her heart would be breaking were it not peppered with the shards of a bullet.

“Alright, sweetheart. You sleep now. I’ll see you in the morning, my love. Sleep now and dream of me, promise?”

She might have laughed but her body was so heavy, she tried to smile at least, to let him know that she loved him. She smiled for him and had one last thought to share.

“You know, all this rain will do wonders for the flowers. Nothing helps flowers grow like the rain.”

Then her breath sighed out of her and her chest fell and did not rise again. Anthony Gold fell forward, curling himself around the still form of the woman he loved as the rain mingled with her blood on the cobbles beneath them, washing away the evidence of her suffering. The letter she’d been so determined for him to have sat forgotten at her side, a small, bloodstained photograph slipping from the folds of the paper. Peering up at the sobbing man, though he did not see, was the image of a young boy with earnest brown eyes and a serious mouth.


End file.
